The advent of cloud-based computing architectures has opened new possibilities for the rapid and scalable deployment of virtual Web stores, media outlets, and other on-line sites or services. In general, a cloud-based architecture deploys a set of hosted resources such as processors, operating systems, software and other components that can be combined or strung together to form virtual machines. A user or customer can request the instantiation of a virtual machine or set of machines from those resources from a central server or management system to perform intended tasks or applications. For example, a user may wish to set up and instantiate a virtual server from the cloud to create a storefront to market products or services on a temporary basis, for instance, to sell tickets to an upcoming sports or musical performance. The user can lease or subscribe to the set of resources needed to build and run the set of instantiated virtual machines on a comparatively short-term basis, such as hours or days, for their intended application. Another type of software entity that has found certain application in certain spaces is software appliances, which generally speaking can represent relatively self-contained software installations including full or customized partial operating system installations, combined with selected applications in a single installation or update package.
Currently, when a user desires to can lease or subscribe to the set of resources, the user may request the set of resources based on their service level requirements and then receive a price for the request from a cloud marketplace system. Currently, no mechanism exists to permit those resource requests to be distributed to multiple cloud marketplace systems, to widen the range of available options or create the opportunity for redundancy in the sources for those requested resources. Thus, there is a need in the art for methods and systems that provide an ability to distribute or fan out a resource request to multiple cloud marketplace systems or platforms, and aggregate the resulting resource offerings to select a set of sources best suited to the requesting entity's needs.